The battering Fidajete Brucaj took in the Metro-North derailment on Sunday left her with two spinal fractures. The mother of five from Yorktown, N.Y., struggles to remember the parade of people who have visited her hospital room, and she suffers pain from the neck down.

"If people ask her how she is, she'll say, 'My body is destroyed. How are you?' " said a daughter, Nora Brucaj. "She knows who she is and who people are...